The Bennett Monolith is a monumental stone sculpture from the
pre-Columbian
In the history of the Americas, the pre-Columbian era, also known as the pre-contact era, or as the pre-Cabraline era specifically in Brazil, spans from the initial peopling of the Americas in the Upper Paleolithic to the onset of European col ...
Tiwanaku civilization, located in present-day
Bolivia
Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America. The country features diverse geography, including vast Amazonian plains, tropical lowlands, mountains, the Gran Chaco Province, w ...
. Standing approximately 7.3 meters (24 feet) tall and weighing around 20 tons, it is the largest known human-carved monolithic statue in the Andean region and the Western hemisphere.
Originally called "Stela 10", the monolith was named after American archaeologist
Wendell C. Bennett, who exhumed the artifact in 1932 from the Semi-Subterranean Temple at the
Tiwanaku
Tiwanaku ( or ) is a Pre-Columbian archaeological site in western Bolivia, near Lake Titicaca, about 70 kilometers from La Paz, and it is one of the largest sites in South America. Surface remains currently cover around 4 square kilometers and in ...
archaeological site.
It was possibly detected earlier in 1903 by the French Scientific Mission.
The monolith was moved and displayed in a plaza in
La Paz
La Paz, officially Nuestra Señora de La Paz (Aymara language, Aymara: Chuqi Yapu ), is the seat of government of the Bolivia, Plurinational State of Bolivia. With 755,732 residents as of 2024, La Paz is the List of Bolivian cities by populati ...
, Bolivia. In 2000, it was moved back to
Tiwanaku
Tiwanaku ( or ) is a Pre-Columbian archaeological site in western Bolivia, near Lake Titicaca, about 70 kilometers from La Paz, and it is one of the largest sites in South America. Surface remains currently cover around 4 square kilometers and in ...
. The structure is currently housed at the
Tiwanaku Site Museum
The Tiwanaku Site Museum is an archaeological museum located in Tiwanaku, La Paz, Bolivia, near the Tiwanaku Pre-Columbian era, pre-Columbian archaeological site.
It houses numerous funerary archaeological artifacts, ceramic pieces, and stone scu ...
, near where it was originally found.
The statue is made of reddish sandstone.
Gallery
File:Bennett 1ºfoto.jpg, First photograph of the monolith in June 1932
File:Monolito_Bennett_en_miraflores.jpg, The monolith on display at La Paz
See also
*
Ponce Monolith
The Ponce Monolith, also known as the Ponce Stela, is a monumental stone sculpture from the pre-Columbian era, pre-Columbian Tiwanaku polity, Tiwanaku civilization. It is located in the Kalasasaya area of the Tiwanaku, ruins of Tiwanaku in Bolivia ...
*
References
{{Authority control
1932 archaeological discoveries
Sandstone sculptures